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Self. vs Other

Psyduck

Psyduck

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Joined
Feb 24, 2008
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672
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." -- Oscar Wilde
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Is it possible to be an Authentic Self, or do we necessarily define ourself through the world contingently? Stated otherwise: under which circumanstances (how) can 'a Self' not be 'an Other'?

Discuss. :)
 
When souls come to this world, they assume an individual identity. Souls themselves don't have an individual nature as you understand it.

The human "self" is your individual nature. Who you see yourself to be. It is a collection of things you have attached to yourself in life, according to your individual filters.

When we have filled out this identity as much as we want to, the point of returning "home" becomes a powerful force in our lives and a spiritual path is born.

It takes you back to your original condition. A radiant soul at play in the
"kingdom".

The kingdom is the godhead. Where all individuality is reabsorbed back into where it came from.

"God", by whatever your definition of that may be.



x
 
Self and other are non-existant, that is the illusion of duality. The true nature of all things is emptiness, no form or being exists inherently, our true nature is pure awareness devoid of self.
 
I'd like to fine tune your explanation.

There is no emptiness, as that too would imply a duality.

Nor are we devoid of self. It merely becomes another tool in the box to explore creation with.

"God" is the common clay of creation. Pure consciousness. No form of itself, but capable of all.




x
 
i think that being an authentic self is much like how artists adapt artworks of other artists and create something of their own -- some concepts are shared, but in the end a very different piece is made.
 
Psyduck said:
Is it possible to be an Authentic Self, or do we necessarily define ourself through the world contingently?

Stated otherwise: under which circumanstances (how) can 'a Self' not be 'an Other'?

Discuss. :)
Click to expand...

When we use our individual thought about any information or event that we perceive and take in, we are acting from the authentic self and develop our own individuality.

Most people absorb what others subject them to, without allowing their own experience and critical thinking to dictate with their own volition what may or may not be true; to exercise their own reasoning and scrutinize their own perceptions and experiences. They act from the group mind, in which they merge, become a percentage of the group and lose their individual thought and choice to come to their own conclusions. it is easy, but poverty of mind.
They are influenced by the mob, they are on an easy ride but they lose a lot of creativity in their thinking.They are the stereotypes that fit everything and everyone in the box.
The self does not individuate under such circumstances, they rely on the influence of others, it is quick but very inacurate and lacks choice.
They are merged in others-and can easily be manipulated by others this way, unless they individuate.

When young, we first take in to ourself-others-we create our object world where we form through; we act as they did by mirroring, then we individuate from them to form the personal self.

The authetic self, is the inner core part of the self, I believe the others are speaking of the higher self?

As in the spiritual context...transformation of the ego and through the authentic self to a higher lever. I see the inner, truer, authentic self having a spiritual base, yet one may need to go through it into a higher transendance of losing all boundaries, in a form of one with the universial consciousness-as in a god consciousness.

To be authentic is to be open and speak your truth, not from the persona we like to present, to connect trully with others, and be able to be who we are so we learn from each other and enrich one another.
I am uncertain if I understood your question fully, only you can tell if I did.
 
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Chimeric said:
i think that being an authentic self is much like how artists adapt artworks of other artists and create something of their own -- some concepts are shared, but in the end a very different piece is made.
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I like this. I once read a quote, which I can't remember exactly, but it was expressing how people often believe the 'self' is something that people try to find, while the author of the quote believed that the self is something every individual creates.

Of course, the selves we create are going to borrow from other peoples selves who we admire, but that isn't to say every aspect of ourself is borrowed/copied. That is literally impossible.
 
"Authenticity" is a problematic notion. After all, what is a real self? What isn't a real self? When do we feel that we are not really being ourselves? Seems like a weird notion. After all, how could you possibly be anything other than yourself?

If we think about times when we have not been "being ourself", inevitably we think of social contexts in which we did not feel comfortable. In which we had to, in some way, "work" in order to interact successfully with other people.

This leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the feeling of "authenticity", of "being myself" is dependent on social contexts in which we feel comfortable. In other words, it is certain kinds of relationships that allow us to "be ourselves." In some contexts, we feel awkward, we can not be ourselves. In others, we are comfortable - we can be ourselves. What is the difference between these contexts?

Anthony Giddens (a British sociologist) argues that "authenticity" is an accomplishment. We need certain kinds of relationships to accomplish "being ourselves." Giddens calls these kinds of relationships "pure" - they are relationships which are not dependent on anything else other than the relationality between the people involved, in order to exist. In the pure relationship, the people involved accomplish authenticity - they can be themselves. (contrast this with, for example, relationships with people you work with, which only exist for the purpose of work, and in which for the most part we can not "be ourselves.")

So, what does this mean about the self? It means that there is no "true" self in there, waiting to be expressed. Rather, our selves are negotiated, constructed, and dependent on certain kinds of relationships. If we don't have these kinds of relationships we can never "be ourselves," accomplish authenticity. And this is a very painful thing. The "authentic" self is not self-referential, but actually a product of our relationships with others.
 
Perhaps the 'symbolic interactionists' apply? I am taken with their framework, but it isn't QUITE right...and it's a theory of everything and nothing all at once; one can't really use it to 'do' things...

As a rough cut, I think that we must take ourselves as other to view ourselves (imagined extension into 3rd person + sensory experience of self). Through which medium do we view ourselves? We perceive objects mostly through the 'aether' of society, accrued through our biography of interacting with people. Roughly, we may think of this as, "[x] is me".

And then we act as well as perceive, evaluate, etc. (but is thinking a type of doing?) "I do [x]". This we cannot fully understand or predict. Just slightly retrospectively (maybe our senses are almost in the present)...we perceive what this "I" does only insofar as we reflect on it as a "me".

ebola
 
Self is buried very deeply perhaps rarely if ever accessible - but I'd guess it does exist but has little if any relationship with the so called real world.
We cannot act without taking into consideration things learned from others, language and culture would only serve to muddy the waters of the true self. It's probably only acessible at a point beyond language.
I believe some people may feel the self can transcend this language barrier that I've arbitrarily imposed, if so I'd like to hear how this could be achieved.
 
It depends on how you want to differentiate self and other. People are a product of social artifacts, but social artifacts are the product of human self-expression. It's another chicken/egg or free-will/determinism sort of problem.
 
satricion said:
"Authenticity" is a problematic notion. After all, what is a real self? What isn't a real self? When do we feel that we are not really being ourselves? Seems like a weird notion. After all, how could you possibly be anything other than yourself?

If we think about times when we have not been "being ourself", inevitably we think of social contexts in which we did not feel comfortable. In which we had to, in some way, "work" in order to interact successfully with other people.

This leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the feeling of "authenticity", of "being myself" is dependent on social contexts in which we feel comfortable. In other words, it is certain kinds of relationships that allow us to "be ourselves." In some contexts, we feel awkward, we can not be ourselves. In others, we are comfortable - we can be ourselves. What is the difference between these contexts?

Anthony Giddens (a British sociologist) argues that "authenticity" is an accomplishment. We need certain kinds of relationships to accomplish "being ourselves." Giddens calls these kinds of relationships "pure" - they are relationships which are not dependent on anything else other than the relationality between the people involved, in order to exist. In the pure relationship, the people involved accomplish authenticity - they can be themselves. (contrast this with, for example, relationships with people you work with, which only exist for the purpose of work, and in which for the most part we can not "be ourselves.")

So, what does this mean about the self? It means that there is no "true" self in there, waiting to be expressed. Rather, our selves are negotiated, constructed, and dependent on certain kinds of relationships. If we don't have these kinds of relationships we can never "be ourselves," accomplish authenticity. And this is a very painful thing. The "authentic" self is not self-referential, but actually a product of our relationships with others.
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Great post! This seems true enough to me. All any of us wants is people who find our presence in their lives INTRINSICALLY good. That is, good the way a warm springtime breeze is good, not the way a paycheck is good. I think the search for this, which is not rare but not easy to find either, is at the heart of the human condition and man's search for meaning.
 
satricion said:
"Authenticity" is a problematic notion. After all, what is a real self? What isn't a real self? When do we feel that we are not really being ourselves? Seems like a weird notion. After all, how could you possibly be anything other than yourself?

If we think about times when we have not been "being ourself", inevitably we think of social contexts in which we did not feel comfortable. In which we had to, in some way, "work" in order to interact successfully with other people.

This leads us to the inevitable conclusion that the feeling of "authenticity", of "being myself" is dependent on social contexts in which we feel comfortable. In other words, it is certain kinds of relationships that allow us to "be ourselves." In some contexts, we feel awkward, we can not be ourselves. In others, we are comfortable - we can be ourselves. What is the difference between these contexts?

Anthony Giddens (a British sociologist) argues that "authenticity" is an accomplishment. We need certain kinds of relationships to accomplish "being ourselves." Giddens calls these kinds of relationships "pure" - they are relationships which are not dependent on anything else other than the relationality between the people involved, in order to exist. In the pure relationship, the people involved accomplish authenticity - they can be themselves. (contrast this with, for example, relationships with people you work with, which only exist for the purpose of work, and in which for the most part we can not "be ourselves.")

So, what does this mean about the self? It means that there is no "true" self in there, waiting to be expressed. Rather, our selves are negotiated, constructed, and dependent on certain kinds of relationships. If we don't have these kinds of relationships we can never "be ourselves," accomplish authenticity. And this is a very painful thing. The "authentic" self is not self-referential, but actually a product of our relationships with others.
Click to expand...

I'd cursorily agree. As a personal anecdote, one of the big things I noticed when moving for the first time, is that the person I feel that I am is largely dependent on how people are treating me. My sense of self seems like a product of my relationships. So getting to the OP, I would say we define ourselves contingently.

I'm unclear on what the OP was actually asking, though.

I also like ebola's idea that we model ourselves in the same ways that we model other people. Perhaps even the vice versa. Very briefly, maybe in order to understand the Other we must put them in terms of the Self. (This idea is proposed for the motor system at least: in order to understand the consequences of a motor action performed by an Other, we must use the same circuits that control that motor action in our Self e.g. to understand someone kicking a soccer ball we must go through the neural motions of kicking that soccer ball ourselves.)
 
The only way to be such an "authentic self" is to do things for your own reasons: Use the frequently-underestimated power of your inbuilt problem-solving engine to reach your own decisions. Take even what I say with a grain of salt, as I am not you. That isn't to say that you can't accept experience or advice from others - since the nature of the mind is inherently one of reactivity, being so is unavoidable - but before integrating any experience, reflect upon it.
 
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